


Let the Truth Spring Free

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Series: All Eternals Deck [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Awkwardness, Bruce & Hulk Interaction, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Hulk Hugs (Marvel), Hulk Sex (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Making Friends, Moving In Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 03:56:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16210898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: Bruce gets to know Bucky, after Hulk has made friends with the Winter Soldier.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to fluffydeath for beta and to everyone who has encouraged this, including everyone commenting on an All Eternals Deck story in the last several months, who persuaded me that there was some point in pushing on and finishing after all this time. :D
> 
> Title from Track 2 of _All Eternals Deck_ , "Birth of Serpents." 
> 
>  
> 
> _Look hard at what you see and then remember you and me / And let the truth spring free_

Bruce always knew, unavoidably, when he was waking up after being the Other Guy. He otherwise never slept as deeply, so the waking up itself was the first clue. Once he did regain awareness, there was a particular residual awfulness--psychological radiation--that lingered from the presence of that anger and violence.

Also, he tended to be ravenously hungry. Most of the energy for the transformation came from the gamma radiation, but some of it was still good old ATP. He always woke up depleted, more so the longer the Other Guy had been active, and especially if anything had happened that required healing.

So he was confused to come around feeling the Other Guy's mental radiation signature, but not hungry at all, and resting on something soft. For a half-second he entertained the thought that he'd just had some really intense nightmares, and then he recognized the ache of an IV in the back of his hand and an unfamiliar ambient smell with heavy notes of damp concrete and cold metal. The bed itself was also unfamiliar, some kind of soft mattress over a hard surface; the depth of blankets piled on top of him was nothing he would have arranged for himself. He was clean, too, and clothed in some kind of soft pajamas that didn't feel familiar at all.

He stayed absolutely still, listening and trying to keep his breathing even, to avoid giving himself away. He hadn't bathed and dressed and put himself in this bed, which meant someone else had.

He barely heard a footstep and felt the stir of air before he felt someone sit down close beside where he was lying. A voice--masculine, adult but not old, indeterminate American accent--said with a faint edge of bewilderment, "He's not here. I can't find him."

It was none of the things Bruce would have expected anyone to be saying to him, especially in that easy, conversational tone. Like this person knew him--like they'd been talking all this time--with absolutely no edge of threat or fear. 

The stranger spoke like he had a problem and wanted to talk it out with Bruce, maybe get his help solving it. As if they were equals: students in the same class, researchers in the same lab. 

Bruce opened his eyes. 

His gaze lighted first on the shining metal arm, emblazoned with a red star at the shoulder, but when he looked past that he couldn't help reading defeat in the bowed head and the slumped posture. In weird contrast to the shiny hardness of the arm, the guy was dressed in some kind of scrubs in a grayish blue color--a likely match for what Bruce himself was dressed in, as if they were patients or inmates together. Long hair hid the stranger's face, though Bruce doubted he would recognize that when the _metal arm_ wasn't ringing any bells. 

It was almost as conspicuous and memorable as being, say, nine feet tall and green.

"Who--" Bruce stopped short as the man twisted, looking down at him.

Bruce almost did recognize him, though. There was something in the shape of the face, the silver-blue eyes slightly widened in surprise. He had seen this man before. Somewhere. Recently? Was this a memory of the Other Guy's leaking through? What the hell had he done?

"I don't know his name," the metal-armed man said, meeting Bruce's gaze for the barest second before he looked away again, frowning in thought, obviously fixated on a question entirely different from the one Bruce had meant to ask. Not _who are you?_ but _who are you looking for?_

"But there's another one, I know there is. Like us. Like them, but not one of them. A good one. He could help us, if I could just find him."

_He could help us_ was concerning but there was more urgency attached to _Them._ Bruce sat up and stared around.

They were in a huge concrete-walled space; Bruce was lying on a pallet tucked into one corner, the closest thing to a cozy spot in the immense room. Straight ahead was a narrow window of thick glass in a high wall. To either side were...

Tubes? Tanks? Huge apparatuses of some kind, softly glowing. Behind the frosted glass of each he could make out the unmistakable shapes of human forms. Five of them. 

And someone--the man beside him, obviously--had scraped away a little square in the frost on each tank. Bruce could picture him going from one to the next, clearing a space--with his metal fingers?--so that he could peer inside, looking for...

_Like us. Like them. A good one._

"When you say, like us," Bruce said, looking from the man at his side to the tanks and back. "You mean..."

"An experiment," the man said, then frowned and shook his head. "No--not an experiment, not him. He was... the success. He was beautiful. Everyone loved him. Why can't I find him?"

Alarm bells of an exciting new nature were ringing in the back of Bruce's mind, but he was stuck on this point. "Like. Us?"

The man did look at him again, with a new anxious expression. "Did you--you don't remember? I don't remember sometimes, I should've--HYDRA had you. They... gave you something, I guess? You were... bigger. And green. You don't remember any of that?"

"I..." Bruce stared at him. The sense of familiarity was still nagging at him, but he wasn't getting back anything recent. It usually took some time for any memory of what the Other Guy had done to surface, no matter how urgently he wanted to know. 

Although honestly there were kind of a lot of things that he urgently wanted to know here. " _HYDRA_? Like, the Nazi mad science guys?"

Bruce looked around again, searching for some kind of confirmation that he hadn't traveled sixty-five years back in time to the middle of World War II. It honestly might not be the weirdest thing that had ever happened to him, if he had. 

"HYDRA," the guy repeated. "They, uh... I don't... I guess that's where they started, the Nazis? But now they're just... secret, and... evil." 

Bruce looked over at him again, at the metal arm and its red star--Communist Russia? It would require somewhat less time travel, but the guy didn't sound Russian. 

"Still science, I guess," the guy added reflectively. "That was--they were studying you. They used to study me, I think, but they've got me pretty well figured out now. I wasn't the point, they just put me in with you to... You don't remember any of it?"

Bruce rubbed at his forehead and groped for the last thing he remembered. He'd gone up to the Arctic, tried to kill himself. He'd gone a little crazy after even that didn't work, running around pretty recklessly even after the Other Guy relinquished his hold. When he finally got half a grip on himself he'd started south--through Russia, yeah--and then he'd... someone had recognized him. 

He'd heard _Dr. Banner_ in a cartoon-villain Russian accent, and...

"I was captured," Bruce said slowly. "I don't know... by who. I don't remember after that, so I think I--" Some of what the guy said finally penetrated, and Bruce sat up straight to explain. "They didn't do that to me, or, I mean--they didn't make me like that. I was already like that. I... change into the Other Guy. When I'm angry. Or in danger."

The guy's eyebrows went up, and he flexed his metal hand; Bruce's gaze dropped to stare as the plates from wrist to shoulder lifted and resettled, making it obvious that it was wholly mechanical and wholly mobile. 

"Stealth," the stranger said, sounding impressed. "In and out, and the giant disappears between times, huh?"

Bruce dragged his gaze up to meet those eyes--still familiar, though not attached to that dim capture-memory. Bruce still wasn't getting even a hint of what had happened to the Other Guy, though he was starting to realize that he'd stayed transformed a long time. Been kept that way, probably. 

By _HYDRA_. Who still existed, apparently. That was an exciting new horrific thing to have to worry about, on top of keeping the Other Guy out of the hands of the assorted militaries and intelligence agencies that would like to get their hands on him. A whole bunch of Nazi mad scientists who'd spent... days? Weeks? Studying him. And other experiments.

"He's, uh... hard to control," Bruce said haltingly. "So it's not really a good party trick."

The man grinned, suddenly incandescent, and Bruce felt a physical shock of recognition almost greater than the shock of the guy saying, "Aw, no, you were great at following orders once we made friends. You just need a spotter to guide your shots, no shame in that."

A spotter, in that sense, worked with a sniper. 

A sniper, like _Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes_ , who had died fighting HYDRA in World War II. Who had been best friends with--

Bruce looked around again at the frozen figures, remembering what Barnes had been saying. _I can't find him. The good one. The success. Everyone loved him._

Captain America. The real supersoldier, the success never replicated, despite all the attempts. All the experiments. 

_Like us_.

_I don't remember sometimes_ , he'd said. _They used to study me, but they've got me figured out now._ Because they'd had him for _sixty-five years_?

"Sorry, I," Bruce said. "You... made friends with the Other Guy? What's... what's your name?"

"Not another guy," Barnes said patiently. "You, when you were big and green. And not remembering. I... they mostly call me... soldier? I don't know if I have another name. These ones they numbered, but I was..." 

Barnes flexed his metal arm again, frowning down at it. "The fist of... but the doctor... he said my name. I think. Or... rank? Soldier's not a rank, it's..."

He was frowning.

"I'm becoming erratic," he said apologetically. "But maintenance makes me forget, and... I don't want to forget anymore. They would have let you kill me, because you didn't know any better. I think they meant to kill both of us, but we didn't let them. No maintenance, though, so... I keep... seeing things. Thinking things. It's... not efficient."

Bruce didn't mean to, but he shifted his weight slightly away from the man perched on the edge of the pallet. 

"Well, hey, if you turn big and green whenever you're in danger I definitely can't hurt _you_ ," Barnes pointed out with a crooked smile. "I don't think anything in the world could hurt you when you're like that--HYDRA sure didn't stand a fucking chance. That's why I brought us here. I figured we can't hurt each other and there's nobody else around except..." He tilted his head toward the tubes. 

His smile faded. "But I really thought... the good one, he could help us. We should..."

At some point, Bruce was going to have to break the news of Captain America's death to Captain America's best friend. He thought, of all the available options, he'd rather start with something else.

"I think I might know your name," Bruce offered, and that got Barnes' attention at once. "I, uh... I was studying the supersoldier serum, trying to understand it, maybe duplicate it. I think I saw a picture of you in my research. I wasn't with HYDRA or anything, I was--it was an independent effort."

Or it was meant to be, before Ross interfered. Pure science, that was what he had wanted, and instead...

Barnes was looking at him curiously, frowning a little. "Maybe I'll recognize it, if it's the right one. Tell me?"

"Sergeant James Barnes," Bruce offered, watching him carefully. It was true that no one could really hurt him, but he didn't really want the Other Guy back before he could figure out what the hell had happened here. "James Buchanan Barnes. People who knew you well called you Bucky, I think."

Barnes' gaze went away, staring past Bruce, past the far wall, into some impossible distance. His lips moved a little, like he was sounding out his own name, and then his gaze locked abruptly on Bruce again. "What about the good one? You had to have studied him. What's his name?"

Bruce cleared his throat. "That's, ah... Steve Rogers. He was... a captain. You were both in the Army. The US Army."

Barnes looked away again for longer this time, frowning intensely, his lips moving a little now and then. Bruce kept reminding himself that he himself was the most dangerously unstable man in the room right now. A stranger's silent dark mood and unpredictable reactions were no threat to him.

Barnes' expression altered all at once, a different frown, and he said, "Wait, what's _your_ name? You must be the only guy for a hundred miles who knows his own name for sure and I didn't even ask. I used to have manners, I think, but I haven't used 'em in a while."

His accent was shading into something Bruce could clearly recognize as originating in New York. 

"Bruce Banner," he said, not even attempting to unclench his fists from under the blankets to offer a handshake. "Nice to meet you."

Barnes' smile went crooked and he said, "Oh, yeah, I guess it's like that joke, huh? Last night wasn't the equivalent of a formal introduction." 

He punctuated this by leaning in--a quick movement but somehow still too slouching and easy to set Bruce off--and pressing a quick kiss to the corner of Bruce's mouth. 

Before Bruce could react he was on his feet, walking away and calling over his shoulder, "Hey, you hungry? I don't know if you want to try solid food yet but this nutritional goo isn't so bad if you mix in the juice powder and some sugar."

"I," Bruce said, twisting to look after him, instinctively struggling to steady the belated racing of his heart. "I--what? What did-- _last night?!_ "

Barnes stopped for a second, facing away. He raised a hand to the back of his neck in a sheepish gesture that would have been less weird if the hand in question weren't shining silver metal, and then turned to face Bruce. "Not--not last night, actually. You were unconscious for all of last night and I was driving. Two nights ago, though, when, you know. We made friends."

"Made friends," Bruce repeated, trying not to picture it. Barnes was moving easily enough--and had evidently escaped from HYDRA and driven through the night to wherever they were now shortly afterward--so the Other Guy couldn't have... but...

Barnes' expression tensed a little; he dropped his hand, and dropped his gaze as well. "It's not... it's not really queer if--"

"No, I'm pretty sure it is," Bruce said, sucking in a desperate breath as the words confirmed that something really, undeniably _sexual_ had taken place, and at some point he was probably going to have to do a lot more than just picture it, but... "I mean, which is not my problem here, my problem is--is--Jesus, I could have killed you."

Barnes flashed a bright smile. " _Juste un petit peu?_ "

Bruce frowned--that was French, he thought. Just a little?

Barnes' expression crumpled again. "Sorry, I mean--because it's called _la petite mort_. I think. Or..." Barnes' gaze shifted up to the tubes, full of... frozen people, apparently. 

Little death indeed. 

"Fuck," Bruce muttered, rubbing his face, and instantly tried to picture _that_ and then just as quickly _stopped picturing it_. "I mean, uh--I just--the Other--me, when I'm big and green, I don't exactly... make good choices, so I..."

Barnes' face fell further and he muttered, "Yeah, okay, got it," and walked away in stiff-legged strides.

Bruce sat staring after him as he slowly realized that he had just--just totally gracelessly and not altogether intentionally _rejected_ the amnesiac supersoldier-- _Bucky Barnes_ \--who thought that they were... what, boyfriends now?

"I didn't mean it like that," Bruce muttered to his knees, as he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and tried to focus on his breathing. He could figure out everything else when he was sure the Other Guy wasn't going to show up to try to solve his latest, most truly impressive faux pas.

Maybe it would help, just this once. He was the one Barnes had already _made friends_ with, after all.

"What'd you mean, then?"

It took a moment for Bruce to recognize that the words were directed to him, not something he needed to filter out. His senses were always too much, and it got worse when he was on edge, feeding the cycle that ended with the Other Guy ripping loose again.

He picked his head up warily, but Barnes was nowhere in sight. It made sense--he had been replying to what Bruce said, which meant he had senses as over-powered as Bruce's. He had heard Bruce from wherever he'd walked off to, and responded in kind, assuming that Bruce was enough like him to hear it.

Bruce cleared his throat, running a hand through his hair and trying to gather his scattered thoughts into something he could say. He strained his hearing in the direction the words had come from, but there was no sound of movement, not even breathing. Barnes was waiting for him to say something.

"I, uh... I just meant... I hope I didn't hurt you," Bruce finally managed. "If you... if you said no, or if I was--"

A soft snort mercifully cut him off, and was followed by a flurry of small, mundane noises. A wrapper tearing, something pouring. No words, so the only reply Barnes intended to give was whatever he was doing, apparently. 

Bruce caught a sharp, sweet smell of orange and was on his feet, gently easing the IV out and tossing it back onto the bed, before he had even thought about whether to go find him or not. His nose and ears led him through the doorway Barnes had passed through, down a short corridor, and into some kind of storeroom. 

Barnes was stirring something viscous in a Cyrillic-labeled cardboard carton, and there was an open container of what must be orange juice powder and a bag of sugar with one corner neatly sliced open. The mixture smelled like orange candy, though it evidently had a consistency closer to Vaseline.

Barnes was looking down at it as he stirred, but Bruce could feel his attention. His body was braced for more than just the effort of mixing. 

"Every time I come back to being myself, from being... big and green," Bruce said quietly, keeping his gaze down on Barnes' hands. "I wonder if this is the time that I did something really terrible--really hurt people, killed people, destroyed..."

Barnes' hands faltered, and Bruce's gaze snapped up to his face, which was still turned down.

"Not me," he said after a moment. "And not... not anybody who didn't hurt you first." Barnes raised his gaze, looking at Bruce through the fall of his hair, his eyes serious and steady. "You're not a bad guy, no matter what shape you are. And like I said, we made friends. Maybe we played rough, but we're both built for that. That's all."

Bruce had a bad feeling that there had been a lot of people who hurt him first. For a second he thought about asking what the damage had been, what he'd done, but... he was tired, and hungry, and somewhere in Russia with immortal metal-armed supersoldier Bucky Barnes. Maybe that was enough to deal with for one morning. Or... whatever time of day this was.

He nodded cautiously. "Okay. As long as we're good."

Barnes gave him a slow, lingering look up and down and smiled crookedly as he pushed the cardboard carton closer to Bruce. "Yeah, pal. You and me, we're good."

Bruce flushed hot and forced himself to focus on the carton of orange-flavored nutritional goo. Make that _somewhere in Russia_ being flirted with _by immortal metal-armed supersoldier Bucky Barnes_. 

That was... definitely enough to deal with for one day.


	2. Chapter 2

Sergeant Barnes stood still, watching Banner cautiously taste the doctored nutritional goo. 

He thought _Sergeant Barnes_ was right. He thought someone had called him that--the one who had given him his arm. It felt righter than _James Buchanan_ , anyway. As for _Bucky_... he shied from that, and told himself that that was all right. Whoever he had been before now, whoever that name had once belonged to, he certainly didn't know that man well enough to be on such informal terms with him.

_Steve Rogers,_ now... that felt as right as the sun and the earth, as solid as his certainty that one of them had turned out right. Steve would help them--and of course Steve wasn't here. Steve wouldn't be in storage. 

HYDRA didn't have Steve. They couldn't. Steve would destroy them from the inside. The chair, the ice, nothing would stop Steve from being right and good. He couldn't remember what Steve's face looked like, but Sergeant Barnes was sure of that.

He wanted to ask Banner more questions about Steve--where to find him, for starters--but he knew better than to press too hard.

There was something familiar about dealing with Banner, about the feeling of needing to coax him along, to keep him from losing courage or breaking down. Barnes thought that all they risked, if Banner did break, was the reappearance of his giant, green self, but still, there was something in him that wanted to avert that. 

He had looked after men before, he thought. Not the other soldiers here--he had been in no position to protect or guide them, and they had never flinched from anything, before or after they were changed--but... there had been other soldiers, ordinary human ones. When he was a sergeant, _their_ sergeant, he had been responsible for them. 

Some of them had been so young, and so scared. For good fucking reason, in the middle of a war, but Sergeant Barnes had been good at getting them to go out and fight anyway. It had been kind of a switch from--

From Steve. He'd never had to convince Steve to go into a fight, only to _stop_ fighting. 

An image flashed into his mind: thin shoulders under a threadbare white shirt, stubbornly squared behind raised fists. A determined face, blood running from the nose, honey-colored hair falling above narrowed blue eyes. 

_Steve_. 

Well. Maybe it was no wonder someone thought they could make a supersoldier of _him_. As long as they only needed him to fight bullies, and not...

His mind was suddenly filled with a very different set of scenes. That trickle of blood in his memory of Steve was suddenly a flood, and the faces... there was no defiance there. Shock, terror, incomprehension, the blank glassiness of death. He had seen it so many times--often from a vast distance, but sometimes close enough that they saw him too, and begged him--

"Hey, are you--" A hand reached toward him, and he grabbed it in a hard grip, but there was no answering move, no push or pull. The fingers spread wider, the palm turned up. He could feel a pulse throbbing fast under his hand, and the veins he could see under the skin tinted a deep green. 

"Sorry about that, I should have thought that through a little better," said a rueful voice, only slightly strained. "But it's okay. We're okay, right? You can't hurt me, and I'm not gonna hurt you, so we're fine."

He dragged his gaze up to look at the man across from him, and watched a green tint vanish under his skin, returning it to pink-cheeked olive. Banner opened his eyes and they were brown, kind, steady. 

"You remember where you are?" Banner asked.

Barnes looked down at his own hand and hastily released Banner's wrist. "Sorry, I--I just..."

What could he say? It wasn't as if he'd remembered something forgotten; he might not have remembered those exact faces, those particular kills, until just now, but he had known what he was. Hadn't he? 

"I'm not like Steve," he said quietly. He didn't think he ever had been, not really. He remembered a voice, tinny and distant in his mind like a recording copied too many times. Steve's voice? Or an echo further than that? _It amplifies what's already inside you. Good becomes great. Bad becomes worse._

He glanced at Banner and thought he could see how fear and anger, mostly suppressed but sometimes escaping control, had been amplified into that transformation. And he himself... what had he been, that the serum made him into HYDRA's favorite killer?

"Nobody else is like Steve," Banner said, leaning toward him, his eyes still kind. "I bet Steve isn't even like you think he is, not a hundred percent, not from the inside. I know I wouldn't want to be compared to him. You and me--we can just be us, can't we?"

"I..." Barnes didn't know what to say. He barely remembered Steve; he didn't know how to argue that he was absolutely as good as Barnes thought he was, or how to contain the off-balance fear of imagining that even Steve had felt like this sometimes. 

_You should be afraid of me_ wasn't going to fly, either, not when they both knew what would happen if Banner had any real reason to be afraid. "They used to keep me frozen. Maybe I should be."

Banner's gaze went toward the doorway--toward the tubes where the others were stored. "What, you want to wake one of those others up and take their place? You think I'd prefer their company? You think we'd make friends just fine?"

Barnes winced. "No, they're... they're worse. They never..."

Never had to be coaxed, or forced. Never had to have those words read out of the book to steal their minds from them. And if he _had_ had to be forced, then what did that make him? 

"You should eat," Banner said. "Low blood sugar's no good for any of this stuff, I have learned that much. You can't make any important decisions before you eat a couple thousand calories and sleep on it."

This was good tactical advice, and something he could _do_ instead of just chasing his increasingly confused thoughts in circles. He opened another carton of goo. 

* * *

Things did feel less dire after his belly was full, and not only because he liked looking at Banner licking his spoon clean, his eyes going drowsy with repletion. Barnes occupied his mind with looking around the stored supplies and calculating rations, a very familiar kind of arithmetic, just complicated enough to quiet the rest of his thoughts. He ended up with the warm glow of being certain of good supply-- _a full cupboard_ , some part of him wanted to call it.

"We can stay here a few months, if we don't think of anything else," Barnes said, watching Banner scrape up the last of his carton with the spoon. 

"Yeah?" Banner looked around. "It's, huh. Probably one of the safest places I've ever stayed, I guess. Not much capacity for collateral damage. But... isn't anybody going to come looking for those guys? Or for us? They had us and we escaped, and from the sounds of it they're not really people who let things go."

Barnes frowned, staring down into his own carton, remembering the wreckage he'd left behind. "I covered our tracks pretty well, and I don't think anyone would expect me to take shelter here. The others, they... they were unstable. Not a replacement for me. I don't think the Americans even know about them."

"Americans?" Banner repeated, sounding more surprised than he probably should. "You--the Army? Was it the Army that--is there a General Ross?"

Barnes raised his head, blinking at Banner. "I don't think so, no. It's... one of those civilian alphabet soup agencies. Secretary Pierce, he's at the head of it. Orders come from him."

Banner looked really disturbed at that. "So, uh. Staying out of the US sounds like a good plan, anyway."

Barnes nodded. "They'll probably figure out eventually that our bodies aren't, uh... with the rest... but they like to keep things pretty quiet. And if we stick together, I don't think they can send anything after us that will take us both out without making a hell of a lot of noise."

Banner looked around. "How much noise would it take for anyone to notice it _here_?"

Barnes frowned at that, nodding. "Yeah, we... in the long run, this isn't... I mean, it could be, probably, but we'd have to really dig in. Harden our defenses."

He could picture it, and the picture was not appealing: a life in bunkers, constantly waiting for the attack to come. He looked at Banner. "What'd you... how'd you do it? Before you came here? How'd you keep away from them?"

"Just... kept my head down," Banner said with a shrug. "Security through obscurity, I guess? Blend in, you know? As long as I don't change, I'm just," he waved a hand at himself. "Just some guy, nothing special."

His gaze went to Barnes's left arm, which was... decidedly special.

"Someplace cold enough, I could mostly keep it covered," Barnes said thoughtfully. "Not Russia, someplace more democratic--enough people around that they can't kill all the witnesses too easily, but not enough that we have to worry about bystanders day to day..."

His mind was full of maps, locations--there were a few safehouses that might do, if he could be sure they were still there, that he was remembering the right decade, that they hadn't been sold off or repurposed. He would need to do some recon.

He dragged his attention to Banner, who was watching him with a thoughtful expression, maybe a little amused. 

"So I guess you're planning on us sticking together?" 

Barnes blinked. He was; no other possibility had occurred to him. 

"We don't have to," he offered, though the thought of Banner returning to simply trying not to be noticed made his skin crawl. His arm recalibrated with a soft whir, and he was already thinking of how to tail this man, watch from a distance...

"You know my hearing's probably as good as yours," Banner said with a slight smile. "So if you're planning on stalking me for my own good you'll have to really, really work at keeping that," he nodded toward Barnes's arm, "out of my earshot."

Barnes's left hand closed into a fist, down at his side.

Banner shook his head, still with that little smile, "No, I... it might... it might be nice, to have somebody around who I can't, uh. Break. Too easily."

" _They_ didn't break me," Barnes said, smiling a little himself as he was swept with a sense of relief all out of proportion. "You definitely won't, pal."

Banner looked down at his empty carton, scraping the sides with his spoon as he said, "So then I guess we're planning on sticking together."

He glanced up at Barnes through his eyelashes--not flirtatious or even submissive, but... wary.

Barnes nodded, leaning on one elbow to make himself a little smaller, to soften the lines of his body. To be... friendly, the way he had known how to, once. "Sounds like it. Wanna stick with me for some recon? See what kind of intel we can find here?"

Banner looked him up and down, assessing, and said evenly, "Couldn't hurt to do some research, I guess."

Barnes grinned. "Let's see what we're working with, then. Offices, storage, that should be..." Barnes moved as he spoke, and Banner fell in with him, flanking him. If anything went suddenly wrong, he'd have Barnes's back--or the big green version would, maybe, which would be even better.

Everything was quiet, though, nothing but the echo of their footsteps and their breathing in the concrete corridors. There were a lot of stairs and narrow passageways giving way to wider spaces--choke points and killing floors. The facility was built to be defended in an invasion. Or an uprising. 

For now, though, it was quiet, and thus easy enough to wind down a level, and then another, to the warren of secure spaces meant to withstand bombing. The soldier hadn't often been brought down here, but he'd been sent once to find one of the others when they got loose. She had gone down and in, not up and out, and the soldier had stalked her through room after room of shelves and filing cabinets.

"Here," he said, touching the door that felt right. It was locked, but it was easy enough to force; the sound of the metal giving way was sharp and loud, and Banner jumped a little behind him. Barnes looked over his shoulder to check whether he was about to be joined by the other version, but Banner was already taking deep, careful breaths.

"Sorry," Barnes said. "Should have warned you."

Banner waved off the apology. "What's in there?"

"Files," Barnes said, pushing the door open and peering inside. It wasn't quite the way he remembered it; there were computers set up on desks near the door, and he had the impression that they were fairly new. But there were still filing cabinets, as well, with the typewritten labels neatly affixed to the front of each drawer.

Banner looked back and forth from the computers to the files. "Uh, so... I mentioned I don't read Russian, right?"

"Files are probably a mix," Barnes offered. "And the computers..." He had a vague sense that computers worked the same everywhere, but maybe these didn't?

"I'll take a look," Banner agreed, stepping toward the desks. "See if I can at least get into them. Computer science isn't exactly my area of expertise, but I, uh, at least have _some_ experience."

Which Barnes did not, outside of the occasional rote entry of keystrokes dictated to him, and Banner obviously realized it. Barnes nodded and turned toward the filing cabinets. He had a feeling that whatever was in them would be old information, while up to date intel would have to be accessed through the computers. If he could confirm that the safehouses and facilities he thought he remembered had ever existed, that would be a starting point, but the documents here would more likely relate to the project housed here--the development of the supersoldiers. Including him? Would there be details on his missions here?

He moved down the drawers, reading the labels, searching for something he would know when he found it--and then he did.

_Rogers, Steven G._

He pulled open the drawer without a second thought.


	3. Chapter 3

Bruce powered up all the computers and then started searching the desk space, turning over keyboards and lifting up monitors and CPUs. The third computer yielded what he was looking for: a sticky note with what looked like a login and password, given the jumble of letters and numbers making up the second line. The first row was three letters--NKV, he thought, sounding them out from his vague memory of what sounds the Cyrillic letters represented--and then six digits. Did HYDRA assign employee ID numbers?

Each screen opened to an innocuous-looking login--three of them with a modern-looking interface, and one, which didn't have a mouse hooked up, to green characters on a black screen. Bruce tried the same login on each machine, squinting at the handwritten characters and hunting-and-pecking his way through. The three machines running whatever version of Windows HYDRA used in secret Siberian bases seemed to be logging in just fine, and Bruce was just turning toward the fourth when he heard the heavy crash of Barnes colliding with a bank of filing cabinets.

Bruce whirled to face the sound, hands raised and feet planted, already struggling to steady his heart rate and breathing, but Barnes whirled away from the metal, staggering but clutching papers in his hand. His face was red, contorted in some emotion that Bruce couldn't read, and he snarled, "Did you know? Did you know?"

Bruce forced himself not to back away, just raising his hands slightly higher. "Did I know..." 

He dropped his gaze to look at the papers, but he'd barely glimpsed something that looked like a headline before he realized, with a sinking sensation, exactly what Barnes was asking. "About Steve? About the plane crash?"

Barnes froze for the space of several pounding heartbeats--that was obviously all the confirmation he needed--and Bruce tried to breathe, tried to remember how far it was to the door without taking his eyes off the threat. If Barnes lunged, Bruce wasn't going to be able to hold back the Other Guy. He might not hurt Barnes, but wrecking these computers might destroy any chance of getting information off them, and they needed to know more before they could make any plans about what to do next.

Barnes took one lunging step toward him, howling with something that sounded more like pain than rage. He whirled away again, flinging himself against the filing cabinets and then the wall, still screaming, and then turned his hands on himself, clawing at his head with his metal hand, and at what had to be the joint of the prosthetic with his flesh hand.

He was going to hurt himself, maybe seriously, maybe even _fatally_ , and Bruce couldn't stop him. It was all he could do to stand here and stay himself, and that was no use to anyone.

Bruce closed his eyes and tried to figure out how to let go, how to do this on purpose.

_I need you. Our friend needs you. Help him._

It was like a door opening, or like vomiting, or like falling asleep or waking up, or like nothing else in the world.

Hulk roared as he burst free, but there was no enemy. There was only the man--the shiny-armed man, the one who told him who to fight. Who gave him good feelings.

There were no good feelings now. The shiny-armed man was staring at him, dazed, crumpled on the floor like a broken thing, but still breathing. There was blood on his face and his shoulder, and his clothes were torn. Like Hulk's, but the shiny-armed man didn't change shape. 

They stared at each other for a moment, and Hulk could feel Banner tugging at him, whispering, _Maybe I can handle this after all._

Then the shiny-armed man moved, faster than humans could move, Hulk-fast, and threw himself straight at the Hulk. 

Hulk caught him firmly, pinning his arms in place, and his legs too when he started kicking and screaming. He didn't scream in words, but the scream was easier to understand than words. Hulk knew this kind of screaming, the sadness that needed something to smash.

_Not here!_ Banner insisted. _Not this stuff!_

Hulk huffed. Banner didn't understand anything. Shiny-armed man had been hurting _himself_ , or maybe Hulk, not _things_. And Hulk knew enough not to let a soft-skinned little human hurt himself, so he held on tight until the shiny-armed man gave up fighting Hulk's grip and turned all his strength to screaming.

Hulk joined in, then, roaring right along with him, taking up the sadness and sharing it. He kept it up when the shiny-armed man had to stop to gasp in another breath, and when Hulk had to breathe the shiny-armed man screamed for them both, on and on, rattling all the metal in the room and making dust fall down on them. 

After a long time screaming, the shiny-armed man stopped for breath and it didn't come out as another scream. Hulk let his own roar die, and listened to the hurt-animal sounds the shiny-armed man made, his face all scrunched up and wet and half-hidden against Hulk's chest. Hulk didn't loosen his grip, but he settled more comfortably on the floor and turned his head, rubbing his cheek gently against the top of the shiny-armed man's head and making the softest crooning sound he could, rumbling like distant thunder.

"He's dead," the shiny-armed man sobbed. "Steve was the good one, the golden one, he--he was my friend and he's _dead_ and _they made me forget_."

The shiny-armed man let out another scream on the tail of the words, but it was weak, getting hoarse. Hulk just held him tight and rumbled at him, sadness weighing him down as the meanings of the words sunk in. 

"Friend," he said, when the shiny-armed man had gone quiet again except for the hurt-animal noises, and even those were diminishing. Hulk rubbed his cheek against the man's head again, struggling for another word or two to make it clearer, but words were no help. So he squeezed the man a little tighter and repeated, "Friend."

"Friend," Hulk's friend said back, sounding hoarse and even smaller than usual and patting at Hulk's chest as he said it.

Hulk could feel Banner floating closer to the surface, now that everything was getting quiet. Hulk was usually bored by quiet, but this was his friend. His friend needed him. Needed not to be alone. Needed not to be bothered with all those words Banner got all over everything.

_Yeah,_ Banner agreed. _You stay with him for now. He likes you better anyway._

Hulk thought there was something wrong about that, but on the other hand, he was big enough to hold his friend securely. Banner might have been squished, and couldn't hold his friend so tight. 

It was better to stay, even if things had gotten quiet.

Hulk's friend squirmed in his tight grip, not really trying to escape but testing his hold. Hulk rumbled softly at him to soothe him if he was getting upset again, but also because it felt nice, having his friend squirming against him like that. He had some clothes on this time, but they were thin and soft, not like the armor he wore when they first met, left behind in the Bad Place.

Hulk's friend made a rumbly sound back and squirmed so his front was against Hulk's and he could tip his head back over Hulk's arm. Hulk could see his face then, flushed red and covered in tears and a few smears of drying blood--like when Hulk had pushed right inside him and the good feelings had been overwhelming.

Banner seemed like he had things to say about that, but it was none of Banner's business. He had told Hulk to stay. Hulk's friend was _his_. He shut the door on Banner until his yelling couldn't get through, and ducked his head to brush his lips against his friend's salty-wet cheek, flicking out his tongue to taste. 

"Yeah," his friend said hoarsely, but smiling a little now. "You remember that, huh, pal? Making friends."

"Friend," Hulk agreed. "Good friend. Good feeling."

"Really fucking good feeling," his friend said, nodding. He wasn't smiling like he had before, but then they hadn't done anything fun like they had in the Bad Place--nothing smashed, no enemies stomped. His friend was still sad, but also still his friend who shared good feelings.

"I could really use something to feel good about right now, friend," his friend said. "Whaddya think?"

Friend didn't want to be sad anymore. Friend wanted good feelings. Hulk didn't bother with words, just loosened his grip enough to get at his friend's torn shirt and pull it off him. 

Friend let out a bark of startled sound--pleased, not sad. "All right," he said, wriggling more in Hulk's grip, shoving off the soft, thin pants he was wearing. "Yeah, that's a good start."

Hulk reached for the tatters of clothing that still clung to him and ripped them free, making all his skin available just like Friend's. When he was done, Friend was standing on the floor between Hulk's legs, looking him over like he wasn't sure where to start. 

But Friend was the one having bad feelings, who needed good feelings. In the Bad Place, Hulk had been there a long time with nothing but bad feelings until a stranger appeared and showed him good feelings and became his friend. It was Hulk's turn to give good feelings now. 

Hulk wrapped his hands around his friend's middle and lifted him up so that his chest was level with Hulk's head. Hulk remembered the first good feeling his friend had shown him, so he nuzzled across his friend's chest, finding the tiny bump of a nipple with his lips and then his tongue. 

Friend wriggled in his grip, gasping. He wrapped his metal hand around Hulk's fingers, and his other hand settled on Hulk's head, petting roughly at his hair. 

"Good?" Hulk paused, looking up. Friend's eyes were very wide, his face turning red-pink, his lips wet and mouth hanging open. 

"Good, good," he panted, and then Hulk returned to what he was doing, licking and nuzzling between the sensitive spots and scars of his friend's chest, licking away the dried blood and being careful not to reopen the scratches already starting to heal. Then he raised his friend a little higher, so he could see where the best good feelings were. Friend's cock was standing up hard, even more red than his face. 

When Hulk licked him _there_ , Friend kicked him in the chest when his whole body jerked. 

"Good!" He yelped, patting Hulk's hand quickly. "Good!" 

Hulk laughed and did it again, and again, even closing his lips around the little length. It tasted good, in a body way rather than a food way, and his friend's hips jerked helplessly, trying to push deeper into Hulk's mouth. 

Hulk pulled off to give him a lick and rumbled, "Good," at him, then closed his lips there again. Friend got his feet braced against Hulk's chest and shoulder and pushed more smoothly, in and out and in, gasping as he clutched at Hulk's fingers and Hulk's hair. 

It hurt a little, but it was good. It meant his friend felt good, and it made Hulk feel good too somehow. 

"Good," his friend gasped, "So--gonna--gonna come, pal--"

That meant the _most_ good feelings, so Hulk rumbled agreement without taking his mouth away from friend's cock. 

Soon friend was making noises that weren't words at all--but good noises this time, not screams or hurt-animal sounds. Grunts and gasps and moans that all meant _good good good_ and _friend_ , more and more until the little hard part of him between Hulk's lips jerked and squirted while the rest of his friend went rigid, arching in Hulk's grip. Even his shiny arm locked in place for a moment, with a metallic rippling sound.

Then his friend went limp all at once, shiny arm whirring softly as his head fell back and his legs dangled.

Hulk, remembering a good moment in the Bad Place, ducked his head and blew against his friend's exposed belly, making a loud sound that buzzed against his lips. His friend convulsed with laughter, curling up and grabbing at Hulk's hair again. He squirmed in Hulk's grip, and this time he said, "Hey, pal, let me down a little?"

Hulk loosened his hold, letting his friend wrap his arms around Hulk's neck and press his chest against Hulk's chest. Friend pressed his lips against Hulk's cheek, then against his lips, and then he slid down further to kneel between Hulk's parted legs. 

Hulk's cock was hard, too. Friend looked up at him, grinning. His face was still wet, but he had good feelings now. He wanted to share good feelings with Hulk, just like before. 

Well. Not _just_ like before. But good feelings were good even when they were different.

"Friend good," Hulk said happily.

His friend laughed again and said back, "Good friend. Real good friend."

Then he put his hands on Hulk, and Hulk's feet kicked out just like his friend's had when Hulk touched him. Friend laughed again and stroked him, and then put his head down and licked. Hulk pressed his fists against his own thighs so he wouldn't grab friend too hard. He knew he couldn't tug on his friend's hair like Friend tugged his.

Friend just kept going, and Hulk was groaning and growling, making his own good noises just like his friend did. Friend looked up at him to smile sometimes, but he didn't stop, using his mouth more and more and his hands and--

Hulk roared and shot off, and his friend was laughing and leaning close to him, kissing the side of his fist and still stroking.

When he could, Hulk opened his hand to stroke over friend's head and down his back, and his friend kept smiling.

"Good," Hulk said, and then yawned. The rush of bad feelings and good feelings left him wrung out. He tugged his friend close. He wanted to be warm and close before he slipped away. He knew he couldn't stay long, feeling so sleepy and easy. 

That was all right. Hulk had done the hard parts. Banner could take it from here.


	4. Chapter 4

Banner shrank back down from the giant version to human size, which left him bare-assed on a concrete floor with his thighs splayed out around Barnes and one arm half curled around him. Bucky reached out to steady him, and Banner grabbed at his arms, his eyes wide. He was blinking rapidly, his mouth opening and closing, and he said, "That was... uh... wow, that..."

Then he yawned, just like he had when he was big, and Bucky smiled again, feeling a familiar warm tenderness. Just like--

Just like looking after Steve, who would never stop going until he was too tired to deny he needed to sleep, and then had to be steered to bed or he'd sit down and sleep right there. 

Steve, who would never resist going to bed ever again. Who Bucky would never see yawning again, and guide him to bed and see that sweet boyish smile when he snuggled down on the edge of sleep. Steve, who was dead. Who had been dead for decades. Who HYDRA had made him forget. 

It hurt, but the ache was already muffled a little under his own come-dumb tiredness, and the hurt in his chest was balanced by the all-over hurt of struggling against giant Banner's implacable grip and the lingering sting of the damage he'd done himself. Bucky didn't have to scream. He could even smile a little as he stood, hauling Banner up to his feet.

"Come on," Bucky said. "You're gonna fall asleep, pal, let's at least fall asleep someplace soft."

Banner blinked at him, looking small and soft and defenseless even though he wasn't--just close enough to it, right now, to need Bucky a little. That was enough. "You and--I mean, we--but I was--and--was that...?"

"It was good," Bucky said, tugging him into motion, picking their way across the dusty floor to the door. "Good friends. You did just right, and now we're gonna sleep it off, okay?"

Banner nodded and walked along quietly for the length of a corridor, then said, "But he--I mean I--that was--really? I mean--I saw this time, I remember, but..."

"Good friends," Bucky repeated. He didn't know if there were any words he could use to answer the questions Banner couldn't quite ask, so he didn't bother trying to find them, just kept moving toward the big tank room and the pallet in the corner. Bucky had taken the precaution of bringing down a whole laundry sack worth of scrubs from a storeroom when he made the pallet and got Banner dressed the first time, so they could get dressed again when they woke up. 

He got Banner there and lowered him to the blankets, and Banner blinked at him. "What--what are we--"

"We're gonna sleep," Bucky said. "I'm fuckin' tired and I bet you are too."

"Yeah, I just--is this--"

Bucky tugged the blankets out from under Banner and pushed him, gently but firmly, to lie down, then lay down next to him and tugged the blankets up. "Okay?" Bucky asked. "Or you wanna lie the other way?"

"No, uh," Banner wriggled a little, but settled with his back still snugged up to Bucky's chest, their legs still folded together. "Little spoon's nice actually. I just--should we talk about--"

"No," Bucky said firmly, raising his metal arm from Banner's chest to tap a finger against his lips. "Quiet. Go to sleep."

"Yeah, okay. Uh, sorry about--sorry." Banner finally went quiet, and then limp with sleep a moment later. Bucky matched his breathing to slow pressure against his chest, his heartbeat to the one under his hand, and pretty soon he was sleeping too.

* * *

Bucky woke up without opening his eyes. He could hear little sounds nearby, paper--pencil? Steve drawing?

No. He flexed metal fingers, breathed in the scent of concrete and cold. No. Not Steve, not ever Steve again, but... he wasn't alone. His friend was here. 

Bucky opened his eyes without otherwise moving. Bruce was sitting nearby, wearing fresh clothes and using a cardboard box as a writing desk, a map draped over it with papers on top. There were papers all around him in little stacks, some in old file folders, some looking freshly printed. Bruce twisted to one side and then the other, consulting different stacks and lifting up paper to peer at the map, then settled into scribbling. 

A few minutes passed, long enough for Bucky to suspect that Banner genuinely hadn't noticed he was awake. He seemed absorbed in what he was doing, and Bucky remembered him saying that he'd studied the supersoldier serum--experimented on himself, and it had gone wrong to the tune of turning giant and green sometimes. 

He was a _scientist_. 

Bucky had a sudden memory of a dark-haired man in a makeshift underground lab, and someone at his side speculating on how many grenades could go off before he'd notice. Steve had walked in then and scolded them for wasting munitions, but it had taken him five minutes of determined efforts to get the man's attention and the better part of an hour to get him to listen to what Steve wanted to say. 

Bucky sat up and saw that there was another set of clean clothes right beside the pallet. He smiled down at them, and then at Bruce, still obliviously scribbling, then got dressed. 

Bruce seemed to register that he wasn't alone, half turning his head without actually looking up as he said, "Hey, hi." His body language didn't change in the slightest, not remotely on alert. He had no fear of Bucky; Bucky was his friend too, after all.

"M'gonna go grab some food," Bucky said, standing and stretching.

"Yeah, good, me too," Bruce said, frowning down at some papers, digging through a couple of different stacks still without looking up. Bucky snorted and headed for the supply room, reaching out as he passed to tousle Bruce's unruly hair.

He knew he'd made a mistake as soon as his fingers made contact; Bruce reached up _fast_ , grabbing at his wrist and hauling on it hard as he stood and twisted around. If Bucky weighed less or had been a fraction of a second slower to counterbalance himself against the pull, he'd have been on the floor. Bruce just stood there staring at him, blinking wide eyes and panting. 

"What--where did you--"

"Sorry," Bucky said, flexing his fingers a little in Bruce's iron grip. Was he showing green under his fingernails where they were pressed white by his grip on Bucky's wrist? "I shouldn't have. I knew you didn't really hear me."

"You--you were--talking to me." Bruce abruptly released Bucky's wrist and ran his own hand through his hair, stopping halfway through as if he'd just realized what sensation set him off. "You just--shit. I'm sorry."

Bucky waved it off. "We've been over this, pal. Can't hurt each other, no harm done. What's all this?"

That was the best thing, with scientists: get them back to their science if you wanted to see them happy. 

Bruce blinked at him for another moment and then looked down. For a few seconds it was like he had no idea what the files were, either, as if he'd gathered them in the same kind of fog as he'd spoken to Bucky. But then he shook his head a little and crouched down to sort through it again.

"It's, uh--I don't read Russian but I do read German, so I pulled the files I could find that I could read, just to see--a bunch of this is about the, uh. The serum. Zola's work, before and during the war and," Bruce looked up at him, at the tanks. 

"And after. But some of this is about locations of... I don't know exactly, spy stations? Safehouses? Some of it's not even that old--and this isn't German, actually, I think it's Danish, so it's kind of slow going, but it's talking about a facility in Greenland. You said somewhere cold, right? And Greenland belongs to Denmark, they're probably not gonna be first in line to hush up an attack from the US."

"Oh." Right. They had gone into the file room to begin with to look for exactly this kind of information--and Bruce had gone back and found it, and was making sense of it. From the looks of the map he'd found a file on the outpost near Tasiilaq, which was one of the more promising possibilities that had occurred to Bucky. 

It was strange to have someone else... helping him. Not giving orders, not already knowing all there was to know by the time Bucky was allowed to be briefed, but pitching in. Doing his share.

He thought of Steve again, the way he'd been able to trust him to do not just the big things but the little stuff--order him a beer, play his hand if he needed to get some air, warn him if unfamiliar brass was incoming and he needed to do up his collar or scram.

_Friend_. It was an unfamiliar sensation after all this time, but good, he thought. With a friend to rely on they could be in Greenland, scouting out the Tasiilaq site, within a day or two.

"Is this the one with the..." Bucky knelt down beside Bruce, flipping through pages until he found the charts he remembered. "Yeah." He tapped his finger on a diagram showing the submersible bay hidden under the site, giving access to the sea through a deep tunnel. "Got a pretty nice back way out and everything."

"I, ah," Bruce squinted at the diagram. "It would be a pretty tight fit, if it came to that. The other--I mean, I--I don't do well in confined spaces. Generally."

"You could do it, though," Bucky said, leaning into him a little, just for the pleasure of feeling another body's warmth, someone else taking a fraction of his weight and not pushing him away or crumpling under it. "If you were in a confined space with me, if I'd get crushed if you turned giant. You wouldn't. You'd hold on until it was safe."

Bruce exhaled. "I'm glad one of us is sure of that."

But he stayed where he was, still letting Bucky press into him without budging or pushing him off. 

"Anyway, the more likely scenario is that you turn green at the first threat, cover my retreat to the submersible, and then dive into the sea and lose 'em that way. We link back up when we're somewhere safe or you're tired of being green, and you come inside with me."

Bruce blinked at him. "That's... you just... you can just look at the diagram and come up with that."

Bucky shrugged, glancing at the charts again. There was information on the currents--probably still good, but he'd want to make his own observations before he had to rely on it. The oceans were changing nowadays, glaciers melting and all. Greenland had a hell of a lot of glacier, or at least it was supposed to; no surprise if global warming messed up the local currents first. 

"I mean," Bucky said absently. "I looked at the diagram to confirm what I thought I remembered about the site, and I take what I know about you and what I know about me and what I can guess about who our enemies are and how they operate, and... come up with that. I can come up with other plans, too," he offered, in case that was the problem. "Lots more, once we know what contingencies are likeliest. But--you're a scientist, you can figure out how all kinds of things work. Me..." 

Bucky shrugged, and the recalibration of his left arm seemed loud. "This is my science."

"Well," Bruce looked back down at the papers, shuffling them a little before he looked over at Bucky again. "They always did say the guys in the applied sciences would never lack for job opportunities." His mouth quirked in a hesitant smile, and Bucky grinned. 

"I dunno about an opportunity, I mostly just got drafted," Bucky said. 

The humor in Bruce's expression froze, about to turn to horror, and Bucky quickly shook his head, not wanting to think about it himself. God, were any of his kills in those files?

"Hey, hey. Going into business for myself now, found myself a partner," Bucky said. "Gonna take everything they taught me and use it for us, now. Beat 'em at their own game."

Bruce frowned, looking down. "Beat them how, exactly?"

Bucky blinked, looking down at the maps and charts again. He knew what Bruce was really asking, and it was a much bigger question than just finding the next secure bolthole.

"However we want, I guess," Bucky said. "For me, I think... just keeping out of their hands would be enough. I don't want to kill anyone anymore. I don't want to go looking for a fight, even with them. I just want to... live." 

Bruce snorted softly, smiling a little. "Living well is the best revenge, right? So just living is... bargain basement revenge? Sounds doable, though."

"We could work up to it, maybe," Bucky said. He didn't know what _living well_ would mean, other than being free and more or less safe and not alone. Giving up on it from the start seemed like giving in, though. "Hard as we are to kill, we probably got enough time."

"Maybe," Bruce echoed. "We just have to get there first."

"Yeah, yeah, one step at a time," Bucky agreed. "First step, eat something, maybe wash up if we're feeling really ambitious. Come on, now that you're not in a trance you can walk over where the food is."


	5. Chapter 5

There was, Bruce thought, a special irony just for him in the fact that jealousy was supposed to be a green monster.

One of the things about spending a few years carefully managing himself to keep the Other Guy under control--to keep _himself_ in his preferred shape, as Barnes would put it--was that he had to be pretty clear-eyed on what he was feeling at any given time. He couldn't lie to himself, couldn't ignore things and trust that they would just simmer away forever under lock and key. With the Other Guy in play, the danger of something boiling over wasn't just a nasty fight or a night of inadvisable drinking, and that meant Bruce needed to be real clear on what was in the pot.

So Bruce was aware that he was jealous of the Other Guy's relationship with Barnes. His _friend._ His friend who he could comfort. His friend who he could _fuck_ , apparently, in both the broad and narrow definitions of the term.

He hadn't remembered that until he'd been riding along with the Other Guy, closer to the surface than usual, while he consoled Barnes with _good feelings_. The Other Guy still had the memory of the other kinds of good feelings they'd shared, including the Other Guy _actually fucking Barnes_ , and Bruce couldn't even be upset about it, because the Other Guy's memory was crystal clear about how much Barnes had liked it--and he'd liked it this time, too, and brought Bruce back to bed after, spooned him until he slept. 

But only that. Only sleep. Only a casual touch that led to Bruce completely freaking out--not quite completely enough, maybe. If the Other Guy had shown up again, it would have been laughs and hugs and blowing raspberries on Barnes's distractingly muscular abs, but instead Bruce had stayed himself, so he got to sit here and eat nutritional goo and consider the likelihood that he was going to be the awkward third wheel in Barnes and the Other Guy's relationship for the foreseeable future.

"Penny for 'em," Barnes said, giving Bruce an inquisitive look as he sucked his spoon clean. 

Bruce blinked for a few seconds, then deciphered that: _a penny for your thoughts_. 

He looked down at his own spoon and said, "I was just thinking that place in Greenland will probably, uh... probably be good for being big and green. You'll--we'll--be able to hang out like that."

Bruce stole a look at Barnes, but he was looking away now, frowning a little. "But you said... you get like that when you're angry. Or in danger. Earlier--" Barnes waved his spoon in what was probably the precise direction of the file room. "I was... out of control, I could have hurt you. This you. So you changed, so you could stop me, calm me down. But we should be pretty safe in Greenland. You shouldn't have to change there much. I wouldn't... if you're going to be afraid of me, or angry with me, maybe we shouldn't..."

"No, no," Bruce said hastily. The glimpses he'd found in files made it pretty clear that Bucky was only dangerous when he was forced to be, and even so nobody was ever a danger to Bruce. Not with the Other Guy just under his skin. "I'm not mad! Not--"

_Not at you_ , although that was a stupid thing to even think, almost as stupid as it would have been to say.

Barnes was giving him a narrow-eyed look, worried and searching. 

"I can do it on purpose," Bruce said. "Earlier--I wasn't angry, and you hadn't hurt me yet, I just thought he--I could handle it better the other way. So if--I can, if..." 

Bruce swallowed hard and didn't say _if you like me better that way_ because that actually managed to sound more pathetic than _if you like him better_. He knew, as a general truism more than advice that anyone had ever given him personally, that you weren't supposed to change yourself to please someone else. Turning into the Other Guy was probably... drastic, if he thought of it like that, but it felt more like not standing in the way.

Barnes was frowning harder. "You, uh... you don't like... the stuff we did when you were...? Don't want me to--to touch you, unless you're like that?" His voice got smaller as he spoke, his chin dropping down, and Bruce could just about hear the thought process: he would be recalling Bruce's reaction to that casual kiss, wondering how unwelcome it had truly been.

So possibly jealousy, like the Other Guy, was not an especially _smart_ monster. Although the Other Guy had already had sex with Barnes twice while Bruce just overthought everything, so maybe he was smarter than Bruce ever gave him credit for. Also, he didn't stand around _further_ overthinking things while Barnes's shoulders kept curling down smaller.

"No!" Bruce blurted. "No, I--I do, I--"

Barnes was giving him a skeptical look, and Bruce did the only persuasive thing that occurred to him. He lunged at Barnes, grabbing his shirt and landing an awkward, orange-goo-flavored kiss. 

Barnes froze, then laughed against Bruce's lips at the same time he curled an arm around Bruce and adjusted his angle for the next kiss, which was better. The one after that was better still, and Bruce jerked back from the next one before he consciously registered that his heart was beating fast.

Barnes was smiling, open-mouthed, his parted lips a little wet. 

"I, uh--I might--if my heart rate gets too high sometimes I--even if I don't mean to, so--"

"Well, if you do then we'll calm you down so you can change back and try again like this," Barnes said easily, then looked around the crowded supply room. "Maybe, uh... maybe we shouldn't in here, though."

"Okay, yeah," Bruce agreed, looking around while he was still standing pressed against Barnes, Barnes's arm still around him. "Yeah, that's--that's probably--"

Barnes huffed a little laugh against Bruce's mouth and gave him a quick, smacking kiss before he took his arm away and gave Bruce a little push. Bruce backed up but didn't look away. He felt like if he did the moment would be broken and he wouldn't get another chance, even as what Barnes had said kept rattling around in his brain. _We'll calm you down so you can change back and try again._

Like it was simple. Like it was easy. And the thing was, for once, Bruce didn't even doubt him. He knew full well that Barnes could do that, that Barnes would be in absolutely no danger from the Other Guy if it happened. 

Nothing bad was going to happen if he lost control.

Bruce couldn't remember the last time he'd even imagined that might be true, let alone genuinely believed it on the basis of the evidence. He felt giddy with the realization, almost light-headed, and he was laughing as he stepped backwards into the hallway outside the supply room. 

The hallway was empty and had a surprisingly high ceiling: safe enough. Bruce reached for Barnes as soon as he cleared the threshold, trying to stop laughing-- _giggling_ , he suspected--and trying to kiss Barnes and not doing very well at either.

"Come on, we can do better than this, come on," Barnes said, but he was smiling too as he turned Bruce around and prodded him back to the big open room and the pallet they'd slept on together.

Bruce was barely down on the pallet before Barnes was tugging at his clothes. They weren't much of a barrier, soft and loose as they were, and Barnes had his hand down Bruce's pants, on Bruce's cock, before Bruce had quite registered what was happening. The feeling of it was sharp, real, jerking him into absolute focus on this, here, now, and he was almost more aware of that than of the fact that it felt _good_.

In the next second the instinctive fear returned. His heart was racing, his skin felt thin, and he could feel the Other Guy's presence just beneath it. 

"Hey," Barnes said softly, kissing him, his hand resting unmoving on Bruce's cock. "Hey, stay with me."

Bruce squeezed his eyes shut and reached inside, where the Other Guy waited, pressing close. _My friend_ , Bruce insisted. _My. Turn._

The Other Guy gave a snort of agreement. _Banner needs to get off. Go, then._

He didn't back off, but the Other Guy felt... still, like he was going to wait right there, close but not actually taking over. Watching. Which was only fair, probably, since Bruce had certainly done all he could to watch, the last time their positions were reversed.

Bruce opened his eyes and returned Barnes's kiss. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm staying."

Barnes grinned, wide and bright, and Bruce could see how young he was, despite everything. How defiantly alive, and willing to be happy, if only for a moment. If living well was the best revenge, at least they could get a few minutes of revenge here and there. 

Bruce pushed at Barnes's clothes, and they wriggled and rolled and banged into each other, laughing again. It wasn't particularly efficient, but they got naked pretty quickly. 

"Okay," Barnes said. "Okay, hang on, I want to--" his hands caught Bruce's hips, pinning him gently in place so Barnes could curl down with unmistakable intent. Bruce realized he couldn't have done this to the Other Guy, not properly--the mental image was possibly more terrifying than the things they _had_ done together--and then Barnes was brushing his lips over the length of Bruce's cock. 

Bruce shuddered all over, grabbing at the sheets under him. It was so much, it was _too_ much, he couldn't--

_Yes you can_ , the Other Guy rumbled sternly. _Your turn_.

"Fuck," he gasped. "Fuck, I--oh--" He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt anything this intense, and Barnes had barely gotten started. He was past the point where either the Other Guy would have showed up or he would have made himself stop feeling whatever it was, anytime in the last few years. He'd forgotten he could feel this--he'd thought he never could again--and then Barnes looked up at him with that boyish, pleased grin and opened his mouth around the head of Bruce's cock.

"Oh, fuck, I'm not--I can't--" Bruce lost track of what he was saying when Barnes began to suck, his mouth hot and soft and tight around Bruce. It was good, so good he couldn't think, couldn't do anything but feel, the mindless flood of sensation wavering between ecstasy and agony, _too much too much too much_.

He was dimly aware of the Other Guy's presence, close and solid and steadier than Bruce could ever have imagined him being. Something to put his back against in this flood. 

And then he was coming, aware of nothing at all except the relief of finally closing the circuit, completing something he'd thought he never could again. It flashed by, too much to process at all, and then he was lying limp on the pallet, staring up at the distant concrete ceiling with a friendly weight resting on his thighs. 

He was vaguely aware that it had probably been too long by the time he picked his head up, but Bucky had his cheek propped on one hand and was watching him with a disconcertingly fond expression. Bruce found himself smiling back instead of stumbling over apologies. "Do I get to jump you, now?"

Bucky's smile widened. His lips were shiny with wetness, a little redder than usual. "I wouldn't say no."

Bruce pushed up to sitting and Bucky rose to meet him in a rough, sloppy kiss. Bucky's mouth tasted like come--like him--and Bruce groaned against his lips, primally pleased with that. He reached down, finally getting his hand on Bucky's cock, thick and hard in his hand. It had been so long since he'd touched another guy, even longer than it had been since he'd done any of this with anyone at all. 

Bucky twitched and shivered a little at the touch, and Bruce wanted to explore that, to study him. He wanted to learn every reaction, every stimulus and response. He might even have the chance to; there were no dangerous secrets between them, nothing that could wreck this if the Other Guy hadn't. 

But for now, he really wanted to get his mouth on Bucky's cock. He stopped when he was facedown over Bucky's lap, feeling the heat of a naked body all around him. He breathed in the salt-musky scent of sex. It had been so long since he'd smelled that, other than incidental and unwelcome whiffs here and there. His mouth watered, and then he couldn't delay anymore. He licked around the head of Bucky's cock, and Bucky groaned.

Bruce felt Bucky's hand approach his head and then jerk away, and he picked his head up to say, "It's okay if I already know you're there. Just don't pull too much."

Bucky held his gaze as his fingers pushed into Bruce's hair, winding themselves carefully in Bruce's curls. It was so _sweet_ in the midst of the frantic lust that Bruce's eyes watered, no hair-pulling required. He squeezed his eyes shut and focused on his mouth again, the way every nerve ending in his tongue and lips lit up when they made contact with Bucky's cock. 

It had never felt this good before, he didn't think. It had never felt this _much_. Every moment of struggle with his unpleasantly heightened senses was almost worth it for this one. Bucky's hand in his hair felt good, the brush of Bucky's thighs against his arms and shoulders felt good. The rush of Bucky's breathing and the half-formed words were the best thing he'd ever heard. 

He was so blissed out that he didn't realize what Bucky was _saying_ until he snapped, " _Bruce_! I'm gonna--gonna--"

Bruce flashed a thumbs up with no idea whether his hand was somewhere Bucky could see it, his mouth watering--more than it already was--and his cock stiffening in anticipation. Bucky's grip on his hair tightened just a little, and even the little pain of that was welcome as Bucky's cock jerked in his mouth and he started to come. 

Bruce was out of practice at this, trying to savor it when it was happening a lot faster than he was reacting. He ended up choking a little and having to pull back. He stroked Bucky through it, almost in time to Bucky's hand twitching in his hair. Without thinking about it, Bruce reached down and jerked himself off as Bucky finished coming against his lips and over his chin, and he finished a minute after Bucky did, a second orgasm like an aftershock.

Afterward, lying slumped across Bucky's lap, it occurred to him dimly to feel embarrassed, but he felt so good he couldn't regret anything. Besides, Bucky's hand was still in his hair, petting now, so Bucky obviously thought he'd done just fine.


	6. Chapter 6

Bucky lay wrong-way-around on the pallet, Bruce's head on his stomach, his gaze falling on the tank where one of the others was frozen. He kept his hand gentle on Bruce's hair as a memory flashed over him: fighting two of them, dimly proud of holding his own, only to have a third drop onto his back from above. 

He didn't remember what happened after that, but he was pretty sure it had hurt.

And now, even though nothing hurt at all, he could feel the sweet ease of coming slipping away, his whole body tensing again. Pain was inevitable, always. 

He thought of Steve, and the violent pain of that was already a little less shocking--because he had Bruce, the smaller and larger versions both. Someone to watch his back and be his friend.

That was the pain he was waiting for, then. And he knew exactly what could take Bruce away from him, when Bruce himself was indestructible. He had argued when Bucky suggested that maybe he ought to be frozen, but he had limited information about Bucky, about why the world might be a better place if Bucky wasn't in it. Bucky didn't want to die, or even to be frozen again, but he didn't want to lie to Bruce, either, and he didn't want to hide the truth from him now only to have it come out in an uglier way later.

If he was going to have to do this alone, he wanted to know now.

"Bruce?" He was startled at how small his voice sounded.

Bruce pushed up on an elbow immediately, blinking rapidly, and Bucky realized that he'd been on the edge of dozing off.

"Did you..." Bucky didn't even know how to ask, or how to say it. "In the files you saw, about me, did they say what I..."

Bruce's startled expression turned kind, and he sat up all the way. "What you did?"

Bucky dropped his gaze to his mismatched hands. "You ought to know, before you decide whether you're sticking with me."

"There were some references," Bruce said. "I inferred. If you want me to do a proper lit review before we can leave, I'll get to work on it, but I saw the files on how they made you, and what they got for all that effort. And I'm glad that you and I killed as many of them as we could find on our way out."

Bucky looked up sharply then. He hadn't told Bruce about that, not really. Not enough for him to sound as matter of fact about it as he did now.

Bruce waved vaguely toward the back of his head. "I, uh... I'm finding it a lot easier to get at things that happened when I was big and green, right now. I remember what they did to me, to keep me that way. I remember they threw you in with me unarmed, like they didn't care if I smeared you into paste against the walls. People like that, if they'd kept me, they would have used me like a dirty bomb. I'd have been a walking terrorist attack, anywhere they put me down and set me off. And it would have been because of what they did, not because I agree with them, or because I want to hurt anybody."

Bucky swallowed hard, feeling somehow very old and very young next to Bruce, all at once. "But it's not _if_ , for me. It happened. I did those things."

Bruce nodded. "Well, if you think you need to be prevented from doing anything like that again, you can't find yourself a better babysitter than me. And if you want somebody watching your back to make sure they can't _make_ you do anything like that again..." Bruce shrugged, grimacing a little. "I'm not gonna love it, but it looks like I'm pretty good at it. If you want someone to be scared of you, or punish you... I can't really help you with that."

Bucky put his face in his hands, unable to react at all; he wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed, glad or angry or miserable. There was just this tide of _something_ inside him at Bruce's words, and he had to wait until it receded a little before he could say, "I just... had to be sure you knew what you were signing up for. What I am."

"Okay," Bruce said, scooting a little closer, so that Bucky could feel the warmth of him all down one side. "That's fair. Like I said, I think I have the general outline, but if there are things you need to tell me, now or later, I can listen. I don't think I'll have anything useful to say unless it's about radiation physics or the history of the serum, but I'll listen."

Bucky lowered his hands. He meant to just be looking away from Bruce, but his gaze fell on the cryo tube holding Two, and he said, "Oh, _fuck_."

Bruce jerked, turning to look where Bucky was looking, and Bucky saw a his skin tint green and quickly put a hand on his shoulder. "No, no, not right now. They're frozen for now."

Bruce looked at him, his expression going wary, a glimmer of green lingering in his eyes. "For now?"

Bucky grimaced. "If they realize we're alive--if the people who realize we're alive are the same people who know _these_ are here, which..." Bucky struggled to place faces, names, accents, years, but it was a jumble, and there were bound to be connections never revealed to him. "They might or might not be, I actually don't know."

"Then that's who's getting sent after us," Bruce finished for him, looking at the tubes again. "But right now they're frozen."

"Yeah," Bucky said. 

The solution was very, very obvious. There was a way to assure that none of the other Soldiers could ever get the jump on him again; he was even fairly sure they all deserved to die. The world would be a better place without them. When they had been frozen long term, it was because even their handlers couldn't manage them anymore. If they were turned loose to find him and Bruce, they would inflict massive collateral damage. 

They would kill a lot of innocent people. Bucky could prevent that, right now. He didn't even have to touch them; he could probably figure out how to simply break the cryo units so that they would thaw and rot without being revived. He could probably even make it look like an accident; it was the kind of assassination he excelled at.

But what right did _he_ of all people have to sit in judgment of them? 

To say nothing of the way the thought of killing yet more sleeping, defenseless people, even these, made him feel sick, made him feel every drop of blood on his hands. 

If he killed them now, it would be entirely by his own will. His own choice. Would that be the first thing he did, having found his own name, having remembered Steve? Kill five people while they slept?

"This is some hypothetical moral philosophy shit," Bruce said beside him. "I always hated those thought problems."

"Not hypothetical, pal," Bucky said, still looking from one tube to the next. They'd all hurt him, badly. There had been times he would have been justified in killing any of them if he could have managed it, to defend himself. Was it any different just because years had passed? Just because they were frozen now? 

"Right," Bruce said. "So if we make the wrong call, it's actual people's actual lives, not a bad grade or some blowhard making us feel stupid in somebody's dorm room."

Bucky blinked, looking over at him, feeling something like whiplash as he tried to imagine making this sort of decision in _those_ circumstances instead of the ones where actual lives were involved.

Bruce looked a little sheepish--as though he were the one with something to be ashamed of, because he'd had a chance to think about these things before doing them--and said, "So it's important, but not urgent, isn't it? We don't need to leave right away, and they're not getting thawed out right now. If something happens to force our hands in the next twenty-four hours, then we'll deal with it. But we don't have to do anything right now."

Bucky nodded. He didn't think the options were going to look any different tomorrow, or the next day, but he wasn't going to kill them while Bruce sat here objecting, either. He probably couldn't, since Bruce would turn giant and green--but then, maybe when he was giant and green he'd understand that there was only one way to protect themselves, or cause enough destruction to make it a moot point.

Bucky pushed those considerations aside. He wasn't going to do anything now. "So, uh... what we do need to do is figure out where we're going, what we're taking, and whether there's any way to cover our tracks. And take some showers, I mean it this time."

"Okay," Bruce said, rubbing his hands together. "Okay, that sounds like a plan. Let's do that."

* * *

"Well," Bruce said, as they stood in the wreckage of the file room, clean and wearing fresh scrubs. "I think they're going to be able to tell we were here."

Bucky looked around, considering. The structural damage wasn't as bad as it could be, but the filing cabinets were a mess. Still... "There might be a way, actually. Might need some big green help from you, though. Uh, and we'll wanna do everything else first, because we'll need to leave afterward. Immediately."

Bruce gave him a deeply dubious look, but said, "You think there's anything else we want from the paper files?"

"Might be," Bucky said, eyeing the mess. "I'll look. Are the computers still working?"

Bruce shrugged and said, "In Russian, but yes. They even seem to be connecting to internet of some kind."

Bucky nodded. "Get 'em going, I think I know a way to check up on the Greenland site, maybe even how to make them lose the records of it."

Bruce looked impressed, which made Bucky wonder if that was more difficult than he thought it was. Still, there was only one way to find out.


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky didn't exactly have elite hacking skills, as it turned out. He opened the command line, frowned for a moment, consulted one of the paper files about the Greenland site that he'd fished out of the wreckage in the rest of the room, and then typed in a long string that ended in an alphanumeric code from the top of the page.

"Did you just... delete the files?" Bruce braced himself to gently explain about networks and backups.

Lines of text started coming back, green words ending in numbers in red that got bigger on every line.

" _It's_ deleting the files," Bucky explained pointing. "It's... I was used internally in certain cases. That's how I got sent to you, actually. Command wanted to know what Govare was up to, and the people who know what I can do are usually the ones I scare the most. So once I... was used to resolve an internal problem. And they had me use this, to erase... something. From everywhere, every system. It--"

A final line popped up, all green. 

"Yeah," Bucky said, tapping the screen. "So now it's deleted everything it could get into immediately. Now it sort of... waits. Looking for new references, or to get into systems it's not in yet."

Bruce stared. "That... is a hell of a weapon they handed you."

Bucky shrugged, grimacing. " _I'm_ a hell of a weapon. That was kind of the point."

"Yes," Bruce said, excitement rising in his chest. The Other Guy stirred inside. _Smash?_

_Oh we're going to smash the hell out of them. But I have to do it._

"But now you get to aim yourself," Bruce said. "And you're already inside."

Bucky's eyes widened as he realized the scope of what he could do. He glanced over at the wreck of the filing cabinets and muttered, "Best way to hide your tracks is to make a bigger mess, anyway. Nobody notices what you took off the target if you burn the whole house down."

"Yyyes," Bruce agreed, and for a moment all he wanted was to tell Bucky to type in an asterisk instead of a file identifier. Burn _everything_ down. "But--look, there are certain diseases that can never spread very far because they're _too_ deadly. They kill people before they can transmit the virus very far, so there are these little outbreaks, but no pandemics."

Bucky nodded slowly. "Too big, too obvious, they start shutting systems down, find the worm. Maybe even trace it back."

Bruce nodded.

"So..." Bucky typed in the command again, ending with an alphanumeric string he obviously had memorized. He stared at the screen as the results started to come back.

The red numbers were a lot larger.

"Is that..." 

"Me," Bucky said. "What do you think happens if I don't use a control number? If I just... put in a word?"

Bruce winced, thinking of hours spent waiting for database queries to load only to realize he'd done it wrong again. "You get all kinds of stuff--some of what you want, if the word is in a title, a filename, or the keywords. Some stuff you don't want, because that word happens to show up. And you miss lots of stuff because the exact word you searched for isn't in a field that gets caught by the search."

"So... a mess," Bucky concluded.

"Yeah," Bruce agreed. "Yeah, a mess."

The final green line of text appeared. Bucky typed in the command again, this time following it with a single short word. Squinting at it as the screen started scrolling, filling with frantic rows of green and red, Bruce managed to sound out the Cyrillic. Zola.

"Oh," Bruce said, staring at the climbing numbers. "Uh... I wouldn't have expected..."

He looked over at Bucky, who was grinning, manic, looking ready to bite. 

"Okay," Bruce said, hovering a hand over Bucky's without quite touching. "Okay, let's put down the matches, I think the house is, uh, well and truly on fire now."

Bucky jerked, pulling back and blinking rapidly, coming back to earth. He looked over at the terminal, still scrolling wildly. "Uh. Yeah. We should--" He scooped up an armload of files from the pile he'd made of things that were possibly important. Bruce grabbed the rest and followed him up to the storeroom, where Bucky found boxes to dump the files into. 

Bruce started neatening them so they could pack the box completely full. Bucky moved around through the other supplies, piling up boxes in the corridor outside. They would have everything they wanted to take with them soon, and then they would have to decide something about the others, before they did whatever it was Bucky had thought of to cover there tracks. Setting this house on fire too, in whatever very slightly metaphorical sense that turned out to be. 

Presumably Bucky didn't mean to blow this place up like they had the last one, or the question of what to do about the five frozen soldiers would be moot.

Bruce tried to establish some kind of first principles to work from, in figuring out that dilemma. "Killing people is bad," he muttered. "We only kill people if we have to."

"Okay," Bucky said, walking past with a small crate in his arms.

Bruce blinked at him. "I was just--"

"No, I know," Bucky said. "I agree. Start from there. What next? When do we have to?"

"Uh," Bruce said, frowning down at the papers in his hands. "When... when our lives are in danger, or when other people's lives are in danger and we're the people best able to stop the people doing the endangering."

Bucky returned to stand by his side, nodding. "Yeah, that's--because if they were awake, attacking us, then--"

"Then it would be simple, open and shut," Bruce agreed. "So we wait until they're a threat, and--"

"But," Bucky said, frustrated, and then stopped short. "Oh. That's--" He turned away, walking fast, nearly running, and Bruce followed him. 

They went down a hallway that seemed to lead away from the big room with the frozen soldiers, but when they'd gone up two flights of stairs they arrived in a room overlooking that space--the other side of that high narrow window. The room was full of computers and monitors, all of them looking much older than the ones in the file room. There were VCRs hooked up to half of them.

Bucky went to a shelf lined with three-ring binders and pulled one down. It was all in Russian, but Bruce recognized a checklist when he saw one. This was some kind of procedural manual, in the control room above the cryo-chambers. 

"Uh, we did agree that waking them up is a bad idea, right?" 

"Yeah," Bucky said, flipping through pages one after another. "We're not going to wake them up. But if someone else does--"

Bucky jerked a sheet out of its plastic cover and held it out to Bruce. 

"I still can't read Russian," Bruce pointed out, but he could see that it was a numbered list. One through five. There were five... codes of some kind. 

"You said it," Bucky said. "We don't kill them now, because they're not a threat right now. We just need to know when they _are_ a threat. They're trouble, all of them. The handlers were barely able to contain them. They were never actually deployed, after they were given the serum. And just in case they escaped, ran mad, trackers were implanted at the same time they were given the serum. Skull, spine, abdominal aorta. There's no way they can cut them out and survive, and exposing one to air sets off a screamer signal from the other two."

Well, that was... thorough, and horrible, and Bruce suddenly wanted to give himself and Bucky several dozen X-rays. "And this is the signal information? This is how to actually track them."

"So we take it," Bucky said, nodding. "We take it, we wreck this stuff--" Bucky waved an arm at the binders. "And when we get where we're going, we set up monitoring on these signals. If they ever budge from this spot, we come and get them, because we're maybe the only people in the world who can."

Bruce grinned. "Nice. We could be the heroes."

Bucky grinned back and then leaned and kissed him hard. "We can be. We will. You're a genius." Another quick kiss, and then Bucky turned away, saying, "Now all we gotta do is load all the stuff into the ATV and go find a bear to turn loose in the file room."

Bruce halted in the doorway of the control room. "Wait, a bear?"

Bucky looked over his shoulder. "You think two bears would be better?" 

Bruce waved his arms wildly. "Since when are _bears_ on the table?"

"Well, we can't burn the place down too easily," Bucky said in a reasonable tone, waving around at all the concrete. "But we can make a hell of a mess. Plus you get to fight a polar bear, because it's probably not going to want to come in on its own."

The Other Guy perked up at that, and it occurred to Bruce that he was going to have to ask the Other Guy to be very quiet and contained for however long it took to get where they were going. He might as well get out and play one more time before they left. 

"Oh, well," Bruce said. "If we get to fight polar bears, of course."

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on [Tumblr](http://dsudis.tumblr.com)! And my alter ego who writes weird gay paranormal romance is also also on Tumblr, [over here](http://dessa-lux.tumblr.com).


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